


Duality

by Nosferatank



Category: A Hat in Time (Video Game)
Genre: Au mashup crossover thing, Gen, Gift Fic, Minor Violence, two very big monsters brawling it out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:01:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29723190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nosferatank/pseuds/Nosferatank
Summary: Sometimes, people are unfortunate enough to slip through the boundaries that divide realities. Sometimes, they're even more unfortunate, and meet their counterparts.
Relationships: Hat Kid & Snatcher (A Hat in Time)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	Duality

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Toxic_Lavender](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toxic_Lavender/gifts).



> This is a gift x-over for Toxic-Lavender and her au! [link](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28472316/chapters/69767643)  
> if you haven’t already checked it out! This is specifically for an au scenario that she drew that might’ve cracked my heart. Just a lil. 
> 
> Technically this does fit into [Beingverse](https://archiveofourown.org/series/2060283)  
> , but is entirely non canon. The characterizations and mechanics of Hat Kid and Snatcher are drawn from that au, however, and it takes place after the full au timeline is over- 3 years on from soul-stricken.
> 
> Anyways I keep having to rediscover that cringe is not in fact dead and that there’s nothing stopping me from writing self-indulgent x-overs for my friends’ stuff.

Hattie kicked the rock that was in her path. It didn’t help her any, but it made her feel a little better. 

Stupid. Of _course_ her ventures out of Earth’s space led her straight into a Being’s territory- the kind that grew between realities like mycelium grew through walls, pulling its prey through its weave to dump them into other realities to die. Admittedly, it probably would have paid her no mind if she didn’t have Snatcher with her. He might’ve actually _sworn_ at the other Being, he was so enraged!

Which led her here, on a snow-dusted property that was clearly long-abandoned, the flawless surface reflecting the moon’s flat light. Temporary shelter was the first order of business, followed by either finding a way home themselves, or killing the Being that held them there. Snatcher had slithered off into the starlit forest, leaving Hattie to her own search on the walled village’s outskirts. 

The wind moaned through the trees, rustling their branches and rattling the iron, frosted clinking sounds barely whispering into her ears-

Wait. _Metal_ sounds?

Following the faint strains of iron-on-iron, Hattie shoved aside snow-dusted bushes and beat away frozen branches with her sword’s scabbard until she saw something man-made- a small building, just inside a clearing.

As she forged resolutely through the heavy snow, the distinct sounds came into focus. Clinking, like metal windchimes, followed by great, heaving snap-scrapes of something metallic. Feeling a little less bold but otherwise undeterred, Hattie ran her hand along the door of the dilapidated shed, but then reconsidered. Best not to barge in- if they were dumped _here_ by that Being, it _had_ to be dangerous.

Climbing atop a stack of rotted firewood shoved beneath a window, Hattie peeked through the dusty, cobwebbed window. 

Glittering motes of dust in the weak light of the moon. Pots and sacks and broken boxes stacked haphazardly and shoved to the walls. Loose chains, and a _person_ , slumped to the floor with their chains slack around wrists. 

Unbidden, a similar scene from a painted storybook rose from her mind, filming over the sight before her like frost. Awful, aching grief, both her own and someone else’s, like ice water-

She didn’t wait any longer. Hattie slammed into the door, breaking the lock off the cold-rotted wood and sending the old door cracking into the wall. The man in front of her jerked in place, and for a moment Hattie caught his empty, blank gaze before his head lolled forward again.

Purple skin and hair and glowing yellow eyes and a fire-torn grin, like the sunset as all the dangers of the forest crept from their caves for the hunt. Ragged and torn and dark-stained clothes, almost like the Omnecian fashion her brother wore before he became a Being, but somehow _different_. But he looked _almost_ how Snatcher did when he was human- monstrous face and purple tint notwithstanding. Like a darkened mirror.

 _Different realities_ , Hattie remembered numbly. Was he this realm’s version of Luka? One who wasn’t fully formed yet, more human than Being?

It didn’t matter. She had to get him out of here. Before whoever imprisoned him here came _back_ (Vanessa, it had to be Vanessa, this wasn’t a cellar and it definitely wasn’t her manor, but the thought of her reappearing anywhere _near_ Hattie made her skin crawl).

Iron chains were strong, but Subconite sword-steel was stronger, and the alien strength of a fifteen-year-old Tempean stronger still. Hattie wedged her unsheathed blade into a chain-loop, levering it up and snapping the frost-rimed iron like brittled bone. 

“Prim… rose?” The prince muttered, half-delirious.

“Nope,” Hattie said, stepping around his slumped body to reach the other chain. “I don’t know who that is, you’ll have to tell me later-”

Cloth and metal rustled, swaying and uneven, and there was a sense of pressure, like the tug of getting too close to a black hole-

Hattie missed getting swiped at, but just barely, her roll across the cold floor taking her safely out of reach from the prince. “Hey! What the hell was that… for…”

The prince _looked_ at her, and there was no recognition in his face- not of her as Hattie, or of her as a _person_.

She scrambled to her feet.

What little light bled through the window’s cobwebs was sucked into the prince, who bristled up and up and _up_ -

Hattie nearly tripped over her feet as she backed away from him, and realized as much as he _resembled_ her brother in some ways, this _wasn’t him._

Violet shadows uncoiled, arching high. Frostbite-black flexed, extending dark claws that left deep dents in the moldering stone floor. Winter-dark fur dipped, lava-bright eyes staring straight into her own, as a fang-studded maw drooled molten fire to the ground.

The chain around its neck dragged to the ground as void-sharp claws reached for her, searching. 

But it was wrong, wrong, _wrong_ , Snatcher was darker than this, with a split beak and feathers and scaled hands and he _wouldn’t hurt her_ -

“ _Foo… Food.._ ”

Hattie lashed out, the tip of her sword biting between the creature’s fingers. 

It snarled at her, and every hair on the back of her neck went straight up. It wasn’t a Being- she _knew_ , in that string-rippling way that she never did lose after swapping her and Snatcher’s souls back, when she was looking at a Being. But Being or not, she wasn’t prepared to fight this slavering, starving thing.

Hattie turned around, and ran.

The rickety shed _exploded_ behind her, the beast taller than a house erupting from it and showering the snow with debris and wood splinters. Hattie didn’t take her Sprint Hat off, because she could hear it behind her and there was no way something that big should move that fast-

A whistling shriek, like a quark-bomb dropping from the sky. 

Snatcher descended upon the creature as a twenty-foot lance of void, pinning it face-first into the snow as his talons ratcheted closed around its neck and his quill-studded tail wrapped around its protruding ribs. 

Hattie got one good look at her brother’s face, angry enough to tear a mountain down to bedrock, before he went under, spun beneath the creature like it was a swamp-gator dispatching its prey. 

They came out of the death-roll with the not-prince on top, mindless of the tail-thorns still embedded in its chest as it pinned Snatcher by the forelegs, yellow drool dripping onto the feathers of his heaving chest.

The not-prince drove his fully-extended fangs into Snatcher and tugged, clumps of feather and blackbriar trailing from its jaws in a bloodless facsimile of stringy muscle. It dove again, and again, until Snatcher’s rage started to sound less like volcanic snarls and more like _screaming_.

The shrieks cracked the silk-frozen fear that rooted Hattie in place, and before her mind could catch up with how _stupid_ it was to throw away your weapon, her sword was whirling through the air towards the brawling monsters. 

_Thunk_.

The not-prince lurched to the side from the force of the sword sunk up to the hilt in his head, giving Snatcher the opportunity to lunge up, neck fully extended and beaks sunk into the not-prince’s throat.

It wheezed. Choked, and released Snatcher’s arms to scrabble at his ruff, claws ripping out feathers as Snatcher shook his head like an arctic wolf. 

Addled and torn, the not-prince thrashed against Snatcher’s snakelike coil, neck and hands pinned by the full force of a Being. Snatcher simply watched it struggle against all one-thousand pounds of him.

“What are you waiting for!” Hattie panted, running up behind her brother, barely keeping herself from getting too close to the not-prince. “Kill it!”

“Oh, trust me, I would _love_ to.” Snatcher’s voice was raspy and blackened, like the husk of a lightning-struck tree. “But I don’t think I _can_.” He tilted his head down.

Oh. _Oh_. Hattie saw what he meant, now. Where her sword was embedded in the not-prince’s skull, the purple flesh burbled and hissed, eerily like the swamp. Inch by inch it was shoved up, yellow-stained like it’d been dipped in liquid fire, as the renewing flesh pushed the sword from the creature’s brain.

It landed with a quiet thump beside the not-prince, yellow blood dissolving in snow. 

Low to the ground, Hattie stalked closer to snatch her sword. “So… what do we do with it?” she asked, morbidly fascinated by the vanishing blood. “... Snatcher?”

Eyes squinted, he cocked his head, as if listening to something. Tightened his coils around the not-prince, and dug his talons into the dirt beneath the snow.

Blood-dark vines, as thick around as Hattie, erupted from the snow, weaving together and lashing the creature down.

Snatcher swayed in place, before unspooling his coils from around the not-prince and lurching away, hands braced to the ground and head dipped. Strange blood forgotten, Hattie ran. 

He didn’t even twitch as she collided into him, hugging stiff feathers _hard_. She still almost worried that he _would-_ the gash at his breast was huge, gaping into the soft yellow glow of his insides and surrounded by broken feathers. And she could see smaller firelights peeking through slices in his neck, across his forelegs, even in the downy fingers of his talons. 

She squeezed him, once. “Solid?”

“... Yeah. This place… the vines- it’s hard. This forest isn’t _me_. But it’s enough to keep him trapped for a few hours.” His enormous head rose, eyes opening to squint at the weakly-squirming not-prince. “ _Bastard_.”

“If… if we can’t kill it, what are we going to do with it?” Hattie asked, failing to keep the trembling out of her voice. It was just the post-adrenaline jitters- it hadn’t scared her. It had _not_.

Snatcher settled to the ground, belly brushing the snow and forelegs tucked under him in case he needed to spring forth. “I don’t know. If it’s anything like me- or really, like how I _was_ \- our options are limited.” A pause, like the words were dragged out from a frozen well. “... And I have no idea how this would affect us- this dimensional-Being nonsense isn’t my specialty.”

Hattie really, really wished she had more Tempean books on Beings- he’d already read most of hers- because she didn’t know much more than him, at this point. “I… I can guess this was the trap for us to die in. It failed, but for other effects…” Hattie trailed off, wary eye on the not-prince twitching like a dying fish. 

“Alternate realities… that’s _you_ , isn’t it?” she realized. Snatcher scoffed at the comparison. “Okay, _this reality’s_ version of you,” Hattie amended. “Which… I guess means we don’t know what will happen to you if we kill it?”

“Ugh. I can’t believe this- this slavering creature is supposed to be _me_ in this world.” Snatcher shook his head out, feathers fluffed in agitation. “And if we don’t kill him because we don’t know what happens if a counterpart dies in the same reality as another version- what to do with him…”

Hattie shrugged. “We could always just keep him tied up here while we find the hole that Being sifted us through.”

“Kid, this forest isn’t _me_. I can only keep him here for a few hours, and you know it’s going to take longer than that.”

“Hmm.” Hattie’s tongue stuck out in concentration. If they couldn’t kill it, or keep it trapped too long, what would keep it away from them for a while… “Maybe a distraction of some sort? Something to keep it off our tail?”

“A distraction, huh…” Snatcher tilted his head to, and fro, and upside-down. “I think I know how to keep this guy out of our feathers, then. He’s clearly starving-” A wave towards where the not-prince lay still and shivering. Even through the thorny vine-ties, its ribs were too visible for comfort. “-So we give him something more appealing to eat, and less risky to hunt, than us.”

“ _Cold…_ ” The not-prince’s chains clinked as he shivered, the one around his neck scraping at the thorns as his unnervingly-blank face rotated to face them fully. “ _Food…_ ”

“We’re going to… feed him,” Hattie repeated, slowly, hoping she’d interpreted him right. “... Weirdest catch-and-release _I’ve_ ever heard of.”

Snatcher’s ear tufts twitched up, like a shrug. “Hey, it’ll work. And the less I have to see of him, the better.” He glared at the not-prince. “He has to have some kind of weird magic venom or _something_.” Talons gingerly brushed aside the feathers at his breast- it appeared flatter, now, but some of the gash was covered. “Those bites _hurt_.”

“Oh, don’t be like that.” Snatcher rolled his eyes, exasperated, as Hattie grabbed for one of his talons and began to poke at the scaled underside and between the feathers, noting how even the small cuts hadn’t sealed yet. “It’ll grow over eventually. Just taking a little longer than usual. I, unlike some brats-” He tugged his hand out of hers, shoving her into the snow in a way that was gentle for a Being but probably would have bowled over an actual human. “-am not made of squishy meat.”

Hattie sat up and scowled at him, taking off her hat to beat the snow out of it- using Snatcher. He didn’t even _feel_ her whapping the old purple fabric across his uninjured shoulder, the smug bastard. “Don’t call mortal bodies that, it’s _weird_.”

Snatcher spat a raspberry at her, spray of flames and all. “Oh, shut it. Meat bodies means there’s something we can feed this nuisance, at least.”

Hattie snorted. “Yeah, sure, from where…” she trailed off, realizing what the nearest option for live human food- and if this not-prince was anything like her brother, that was what he ate. “The village. _Urk_.”

Snatcher grinned, sharp as flying sparks. “ _Oh yes_. And I think I know how to get some.”

\--

“ _The easiest way to break into a location,_ ” Snatcher remembered a Pryce spymaster telling a too-curious young Subconite nobleman, centuries ago. “ _Is not to break in at all._ ”

Which was how he found himself here, crammed down into a form with two legs, in the clothes of the largest CAW agent he could pluck off the streets- alive, unfortunately. He _didn’t_ want to know what would happen if he passed back to his own dimension with some extra snacks from this reality still digesting.

Thank the spirits the heavy coats and deeply-shadowed hats the agents wore were so concealing- not that crows were known to be particularly detail-oriented anyways. He was black and feathery and wearing their clothes, that should be enough for them.

The town prison had been easy to find- a low, blocky concrete building, sticking out among the log homes and businesses like a boulder among trees.

Getting in was even easier. Snatcher just strolled in, like he _belonged_ there. He might have looked a _little_ bit shifty, sure, but from what he could tell, ‘shifty’ was a CAW agent’s natural status anyway. Some of the humans at the prison might have given him odd looks, but the crows paid him no mind- even as he interrupted their session of TV-static-watching in the break room.

Ah, and there were the cells- mostly empty, with only a few holding single prisoners, and a larger cell that was obviously a drunk-tank, from the trio of alcohol-stung humans slouched inside. 

One of the single humans in a cell was slumped on the bench, picking their nails with a knife they definitely shouldn’t have. 

Hmm. Young, fairly strong-looking, and willful. The perfect snack. 

The victim looked up at the clatter of iron bars skidding open, scowling. “Oi, I already answered your questions, what else do you weird fuckers want?”

Snatcher didn’t answer. He stepped over the iron threshold, hind-talons scraping the concrete floor in anticipation. He closed the door behind him. 

The prisoner, in a surprising display of sanity, backed away, knife shaking in their grip as they pointed it at Snatcher. “Hey, I don’t know what you want, but I already told you-”

The prisoner choked, feet scrabbling against the cell wall as Snatcher lifted and pinned them by the neck- talons pointed inwards and away from soft flesh, of course. Couldn’t let them bleed all over the place. 

The knife thudded uselessly into Snatcher’s side, and he almost rattled the prisoner like a ragdoll before an idea crawled across his mind, devious as his grin. 

“Hey, quit that,” he hissed into the prisoner’s ear. “I’m here to break you out.”

The prisoner dug their fingers harder into Snatcher’s arm. “What?”

“Look, I’m not actually a crow.” Snatcher dropped the prisoner, and while they were coughing and wheezing, he stepped back and pulled the knife out of his side- it stung a bit, like a needle-prick, but it was ignorable in comparison to the fire that lanced down his chest when he stretched the wounds received at his counterpart’s fangs. “But I look enough like one that they ignore me. You seem to be the best option for what I need.” He flipped the knife over and proffered it to the prisoner, handle-first. 

They snatched it away from his talons and examined the bloodless blade, eyes flicking up to squint at Snatcher suspiciously. “Need for what? What’s the catch?”

Snatcher shrugged. “Oh, just some help with smuggling something past the town walls.” _Smuggling you past the walls, specifically._ “I don’t exactly have the money to pay for labor _and_ hush-money right now, so I figured I’d raid the ole’ box,” Snatcher said, smooth and casual. “Whaddya say? You do one job, you get your freedom, and we never see each other again. _Deal_?”

The prisoner looked at him for a long moment. Shrugged, tucking the knife into their boot. “Eh, sure, but only for _one_ job. I’m on the right side of the law after this- the CAW agents are damn annoying enough to keep me there.”

“Excellent.” He produced the cuffs he’d also stolen off the CAW agent, yanking the prisoner by the hand and clapping the handcuffs over their wrists. “Keep these on until we’re past the gates, then we’ll head to where the thing is stashed.”

“Ugh, the whole way? C’mon, man.”

“Not my problem. Now get over here, I want out of this box too.”

Snatcher shoved the prisoner through the halls, one of their arms held in a not-quite-bruising grip as they approached the exit. Most of the crows ignored the pair.

“Greetings, fellow agent.” _Most_ of them. “Where are you taking the prisoner?”

“Uh- fellow agent,” Snatcher repeated, attempting to imitate the odd, halting speech of the crow. “I am taking the prisoner for further interrogation.”

“But, agent!” The crow tilted their head, twitching. “The interrogation room is the other way!”

“I-” Snatcher could just kill the guy and book it, but given he really should remain undetected while he and Hattie looked for a way back to their own lands… “I am not taking them to be interrogated. I am taking them for… _advanced_ interrogation.”

The agent stooped down further, swaying back and forth like the world’s weirdest dippy-bird toy. “Hmm.” A few feathers flew free from their coat. If Snatcher was capable of sweating, he would have been. “How ingenious! Please, carry on, fellow agent.”

Later, as the town gate faded behind them, the no-longer-a-prisoner snorted. “Dude, if you’re that bad a liar, I can’t believe you're still in the smuggling business- _ack_!” they yelped.

Snatcher hadn’t yanked on them _that_ hard as he took off the handcuffs. Weenie. “Oh, shut it. Clearing’s about a mile out, and I want silence from the peanut gallery.”

“Sheesh, fine. Cranky asshole, aren’t’cha?” The soon-to-be-food muttered, but was otherwise silent for the rest of the trek.

When they came across Hattie at the edge of the clearing, she perked up from where she balanced her sword-hilt across her fingertip. “Oh!” She only fumbled with it slightly as she stuffed it back in its scabbard. “I guess that’s the- uh.”

“Yeah, the _help_ with the _thing_ ,” Snatcher answered, pushing the human ahead of him into the clearing, keeping one eye on his sister and one on the still, purple mound in the snow.

He winced internally, noting how frayed and strained the vines were. He’d cut it close.

Snatcher didn’t say a word, instead crouching down and digging his talons into the soil as the human wandered forward curiously. 

Drowning out the human’s question of “So, what are you smuggling into Subcon?”, Snatcher yanked at the forest’s roots, forcing the command through a connection fragile as dry lichen. 

The vines snapped.

The human yelped, backpedalling, and the sharp tang of fear-scent flooded from them. “Wh- what is-”

The warped prince rose from his thorny prison, shaking the dead vines off him like a dog. An empty gaze and emptier smile locked on to the three living creatures before him.

“ _H.. hungry_.” He licked his lips with a forked tongue, glowing saliva burning holes into the snow. “ _Sssssoul!_ ” 

The human whirled around, grabbing Snatcher by the lapels of the CAW robes. “What is that thing!?”

“Why, it’s what we were smuggling for.” Snatcher’s voice slithered like a snake in the grass. “Nobody will miss a random troublemaker, hm?”

The human snarled, but Snatcher slung them off like they were a particularly irritating swamp-leech. “I’d advise you run, if you want a chance,” he called as the warped prince’s shadow loomed over the human as they flailed upright out of the snow.

In their defence, they at least _tried_ to run.

 _Crunch_.

Half-tucked behind him, Hattie cringed. Not that Snatcher blamed her for her disgust- this guy was a _messy_ eater. 

Snatcher drowned out the shearing, slurping sounds of tearing meat by shaking out his feathers, and then shaking _himself_ out, unfolding himself back into his natural form. _Ah, that’s better_. “You ready to [ _blow this]_ \- what was that weird alien saying, [ _blow this iced confection stand?]_ ” Hmm, that didn’t sound right. Probably another weird translation error, even if he didn’t need the mail hat to speak Tempean. “... Kid?”

“It’s just… really different when it’s not from your point of view,” she said, burying closer into his feathers. “Y’know, the memories thing.”

Ah, right. Prey species. “Then don’t look too hard,” he reassured, glaring at the warped prince as he looked up from the bloody smear that remind of his meal. “We’re leaving this place soon anyways.”

The warped prince slithered a pace towards them, bloodied nose twitching. Snatcher puffed himself out, hissing. 

The prince seemed to shrink- literally, growing shorter and smaller even as his mane spiked out like a porcupine’s. 

He backed away, and fled into the woods.

“... Let’s hope we don’t see him again.”

\--

At first, it was guilt that kept Primrose away- the guilt of holding Luka’s hand, gentle as flower petals, before shackling those same hands. Guilt for Sage, and for the dead villagers, and who _knew_ how many people. She didn’t have another way to keep him from terrorizing Subcon while she looked for a way to- to cure him, or change him back. She _had_ no choice.

The terrified howls he made when the chains snapped taut behind him would haunt Primrose for the rest of her life. 

And so now it was guilt that brought her back, heavy winter cloak wrapped around her shoulders and bundle of blankets under her arm as she tramped through the thick snow to the old storage shed. The treeline soon cleared, and where she expected to see the old building and a sheen of pure snow-

Her bundle of blankets dropped to the ground.

The shed was obliterated, as if someone had rolled a ten-ton stone through it. Primrose ran towards its remains, heedless of the snow kicked up into her boots and the shattered wooden planks dotting the clearing. 

“Luke!” she called, almost tripping over what was left of the shed’s wall.

There was nothing. Nobody. Not even the chains, not even the walls, or the roof, and the floor- it was cracked, and there were shattered furrows raked across it, like dragons’ claws.

Mind scrambling even faster than her feet, Primrose bolted out to the torn-up clearing, eyes sweeping over but still not entirely _seeing_ what was before her. 

She saw enough, though.

Dead vines, thorn-covered and streaming from the ground like broken arteries. Broken drifts of snow swept and piled around swathes of ice-dents, as if something huge had brawled in the snow. Clumps of broken feathers, some almost as long as she was tall.

A pair of footprints, not her own- they were too small, and too light. Beside them, the wide print of something huge and clawed; two toes forward, two toes backwards. Like an owl, the size of a house.

(She did not see the mangled corpse, already cold-stiff, carefully buried under the snow for some unfortunate soul to find, should the cursed winter ever thaw.)

**Author's Note:**

> Don’t be too harsh on Vamprince- for Snowl it just reminds him unpleasantly about what he perceived as his potential fate if he continued as he was (he had a bit of a Realization about that in Soul-Stricken) (also Vamprince tried to kill his baby sister). He’s wrong about that though- Vamprince is not mindless- he was affectionate with Florist in his canon- and his deal is a _magic curse_ , alongside the hunger. Snatcher’s deal is just biological need on the same level of a human, when it comes to eating. 
> 
> Also, Snowl had his character development already over the course of like 3 years. This is a pretty fresh Vamprince by comparison.
> 
> (Sidenote: if you found Hattie being okay-ish with feeding a guy to Vamprince unnerving? Good. It’s supposed to be)
> 
> [My Tumblr](https://banyanas.tumblr.com)  
> [Lav's Tumblr](https://toxic-lavender.tumblr.com)  
> 


End file.
